


i thought of you as everything i've had but couldn't keep

by lilydaydreams



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Episode: s04e08 Habeas Corpses, F/M, Heartbreak, Sad, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25875475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilydaydreams/pseuds/lilydaydreams
Summary: Lilah goes home after Wes ends things with her and thinks about love.
Relationships: Lilah Morgan/Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	i thought of you as everything i've had but couldn't keep

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground, which gives me major Wes/Lilah vibes. Their whole arc gives me a lot of feelings, especially Lilah's desperation to keep things going when he's trying to end it, so I wrote a little mini one-shot from her perspective.

_ Love is a funny thing, _ Lilah thinks to herself. She wonders if it ever really works out for anybody. It seems to her like even the good guys get screwed over when they try to love, and she supposes that’s the one thing she has in common with them.

She pours herself another glass of champagne into an elegant crystal flute that she bought from a demon auction years ago―it’s not enchanted or anything, just very, very old―and settles into her armchair, staring aimlessly at the wall. Her record player scratches in the background, a woman singing a sad ballad about lost love.

Lilah didn’t mean to fall in love. She’d never truly loved someone like that before, never really understood what people meant about love consuming you. She’d thought they were all silly fools, preening and posturing to get the person of their dreams when what they really needed was a good fuck. But then she was there herself, and she was wearing a little pair of glasses and her hair in pigtails and speaking in an exaggerated accent and only half joking about it all, and he was eating it up, thinking about  _ her _ while he was inside of Lilah, and it was bad but not nearly as bad as not having him at all. She was at Little Miss Texas’s talk, ostensibly to smirk at Wesley’s lovesickness, but really to check out what the little twig had that she didn’t, even though she knew damn well already. She was trying to buy back Wesley’s favor with a gift she’d spent ages poring over, only to get the brushoff.

On some level she’d known what she was doing didn’t quite mesh with the femme fatale, ice queen persona she liked to project, that she was acting like a schoolgirl chasing her crush around the playground, but she hadn’t cared to question it too much. And then the sky had been raining fire and the apocalypse she so frequently discussed in board meetings actually  _ was _ nigh, and all she could think about was,  _ Where’s Wesley? _ She’d wanted him to be safe, so, so desperately, and after he finally opened his apartment door to her frantic knocking, she’d felt a rush of euphoria completely new and foreign to her just at seeing him alive and well. 

_ That’s funny too _ . She knows he gave her the brush-off, and it really does feel like her heart is a little piece of paper being ripped up into little pieces and thrown to the wind, but she’s still relieved he’s safe. 

Lilah sighs and allows herself a few tears. She thinks she’s earned them. She knows she’s quite literally wallowing after a breakup, no matter how much fancy champagne she wants to involve in the process, but she can’t snap herself out of it.

Wesley thinks he’s doing the noble, good thing by breaking things off with her and rejoining the forces of good. She’s pretty sure he thinks it’s what’s best for her, too. What he doesn’t understand is that for Lilah, having him, any of him, is better than having nothing at all. She was never under the delusion that he would be able to love her back, but was it so wrong of her to expect him to care, just a little?

Lilah will never be good enough for Wesley, and Wesley will never be good enough for his precious Fred. For a moment she finds some solace in knowing that they’re in the same boat.  _ But we aren’t, not really _ , she realizes, and lets out a short, bitter laugh. She’s studied the two of them, and she thinks she might understand Wesley and Fred together better than either of them do.  _ She knows he loves her, and he knows that she knows, no matter how much they dance around it. But Wesley doesn’t know that I love him, and he never will, because he thinks I am incapable of love. _

As tears stream down her face and drip onto her blouse, she wishes that were true. That she could somehow be immune to the disease of love simply by being who she is. Like she tried to explain to him, there are shades of gray, and Lilah is a dark, dark gray, but she can still love.  _ If only love was reserved for the good. Then I’d be safe,  _ she thinks, and takes another sip of champagne.


End file.
